Two Think Minimum

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. Seth is an author, data scientist and speaker who studies what we can learn about people from new internet data sources. His 2017 book, Everybody Lies, was a New York Times best seller and an Economist book of the year. Seth is a contributing op-ed writer for the New York Times and has worked as a visiting lecturer at the Wharton school and a data scientist at Google. He received his BA in philosophy from Stanford where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and his PhD in economics from Harvard in 2013. He is a passionate fan of the Knicks, Mets, Jets and Leonard Cohen.

Ina Fried is the chief technology correspondent for Axios, and before that she was a senior editor or writer at some of the most important tech journalism sites there are: Recode, All Things Digital, CNET and others.

Rob Pegoraro on Tech and the Coronavirus by Technology Policy Institute

Blair Levin is currently a nonresident fellow with the Brookings Institution and a policy advisor at New Street. Blair’s worked for the past 25 years at a high level at the intersection of broadband policy and capital markets. And most importantly for the purpose of this conversation, he led the FCC’s national broadband plan back in 2009 to 2010.

Kelcee Griffis is a Washington, D.C.-based reporter covering the telecommunications industry for Law360, a legal trade wire read by some of the most powerful law firms and government agencies. Her reporting takes her to the Federal Communications Commission, K Street law firms, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon and even the White House as she writes about policy and legislation affecting the media industry. She’s worked on stories on the fight over net neutrality regulations, telecommunication lobbying interests in the Trump administration, the future of 5G mobile technology, the failed Sinclair-Tribune merger and the pending Sprint-T-Mobile merger.

Bruce Mehlman is the founder of Mehlman, Castagnetti, Rosen and Thomas, a government relations firm here in DC. Prior to that he was assistant secretary of commerce for technology policy in the George W. Bush administration and he's kind of an all around smart guy. He has very smart things to say about technology, technology trends, technology policy, the interplay with politics and a lot of it in a global context.

Ambassador Koh is U.S. Representative and Head of Delegation to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) World Radio Communication (WRC) Conference 2019. She's also Special Advisor for International Communications and Information Policy in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. If you think that's not enough, before joining the State Department in 2019, she was a partner in DLA Piper’s telecommunications groups, served as Special Assistant to the President for Technology, Telecom and Cybersecurity Policy at the National Economic Council, Deputy Chief Counsel to the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology in the U.S. House of Representatives, policy counsel for Cox enterprises, and even more, she has a BA from Yale University and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Brent Skorup is a lawyer and Senior Research Fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His research areas include telecommunications, transportation, technology regulation, and wireless policy. He serves on the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee and is the Vice Chair of the Competitive Access subcommittee. He has authored pieces in a wide variety of outlets and has appeared on different news outlets as well. Eli Dourado is an economist and recently served as Head of Global Policy and Communications at Boom Supersonic, and before that, as a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He has written on a wide range of technology policy issues including internet governance, intellectual property, cybersecurity and cryptocurrency. His focus on aviation innovation includes topics such as commercial drones, supersonic flight, and flying cars. His popular writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and other outlets, and he was formally an advisor to the State Department on international telecommunication matters.

Executive editor of Communications Daily and telecom reporter extraordinare Jonathan Make joins Scott Wallsten and Sarah Oh in a discussion of the top telecom stories of 2019, including Julius Knapp's retirement, broadband mapping, net neutrality, federalism, and 5G.

Doug Smith is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Ligado Networks and is responsible for directing the vision of the company and managing every aspect of its day to day operations. With more than 25 years of domestic and international telecom and wireless industry experience, Doug has engineered, built and launched nationwide networks for GTE, Nextel, Sprint Nextel and Clearwire. Valerie Green is Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer of Ligado Networks and is responsible for the company's legal public affairs and regulatory activities. Prior to joining Ligado, Valerie served in the Obama Administration as Assistant to the President and Director of Presidential Personnel. She also served in the White House as Deputy Special Counsel to the President and Special Assistant to the President and she started her career as a litigator with several prominent law firms.